Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/253

Rh At any rate, they were kept there, at Camp Baldwin, or Alleghany, and reinforced by the Twelfth Georgia, Thirty-first Virginia, Anderson's and Miller's batteries, and a detachment of the Pittsylvania cavalry under Lieutenant Dabney, making about 1,200 effectives in all, and put under the command of Col. Edward Johnson.

In December, after an interval of quiet in the Cheat Mountain district, Johnson was attacked by a Federal force of 1,760 men under Gen. R. H. Milroy. At first pushed back by superior numbers, on the right, also assailed on the left, the Confederates fought with such unflinching courage, Virginians and Georgians alike, that the enemy was finally repulsed. This was the bloodiest fight, so far, in western Virginia. The total Confederate loss was 20 killed, 98 wounded and 28 missing; the Federal loss, 20 killed, 107 wounded and 10 missing.

After the retreat of Rosecrans to the Hawk's Nest and Gauley bridge, Lee detached Floyd for a movement up the south side of the New river, and that general crossed about October i6th, with the available portions of Russell's Mississippi regiment, Phillips' legion, the Fourteenth Georgia and the Fifty-first, Forty-fifth, Thirty-sixth and Twenty-second Virginia and 500 cavalry, in all about 4,000 men. In this southern region the enemy was in possession as far as Raleigh, having laid waste the village of Fayette and the country upon his lines of march, penetrated within 70 miles of the Virginia & Tennessee railroad, and produced great alarm among the people of Mercer, Giles and Monroe counties. Floyd occupied Fayette and established his camp on Cotton hill, a rocky mass in the angle of the junction of New and Kanawha rivers, where he startled Rosecrans on November 1st, by opening with cannon on the camp at Gauley. To do this, he had moved his guns by hand over precipitous hills for many miles. With his cannon and sharpshooters, he greatly annoyed the Federals, sinking one of the ferryboats, which served in lieu of the burned